Month: August 2007

For today’s Irish Times article, I wrote about our team in prodution (the photo below shows Cian, Christophe, and JP), running things in August, and of trying to squeeze in new flavours in our busiest time of year.

The recipe came from an idea from Cian, our Dingle shop manager, who helped as we worked through it. It’s very tasty!

Cian’s Chocolate Coffee Crunch

Ingredients:

1 cup sugar

5 egg yolks

1 3/8 cups cream

1 1/8 cups milk

1/4 vanilla bean, cut lengthwise

1/3 cup espresso beans

2/3 cup 70% chocolate (100gm)

What to do:

Melt the chocolate in a double boiler.

Break the coffee beans into smallish pieces using the bottom of a bowl or a food processor.

Mix the crushed beans into the chocolate and spread on a baking tray to harden.

Beat the sugar and egg yolks together until thick and pale yellow.

Bring the milk to a simmer. Remove from the heat.

Beat the milk into the eggs and sugar in a slow stream.

Pour the mixture back into pan, add the vanilla bean and place over low heat. Stir until the custard thickens (around 70C).

Immediately place in the refrigerator until cool.

Remove the vanilla bean.

Cut the hardened chocolate into small pieces then use a spatula to separate from the baking tray. Stir into the custard.

Whip the cream and fold into the mix.

Freeze using a domestic ice cream machine, or cover and place in the freezer.

I spent today out and about in the Kingdom, and happened unwittingly onto the annual horse fair in Kenmare. What a picture of contrasts! The pristine town was packed with a very different crowd from the usual, and the rambunctious mood of a traditional fair (that’s quite rare to come across nowadays) clashed with Kenmare’s 5 star image.

Traders lined the streets hawking work boots and power tools, and many of the town’s shops closed for the day.

Tourists seemed somewhat befuddled by the crowds and mayhem, but many were visibly pleased by the animals on show – from ducks to cows to ponies.

One would think from this photo that members of the Tidy Town Committee will have nightmares for weeks to come…

For those of you who need an excuse to visit Dingle, there will be a film festival in town from the 6th – 9th of September. Opening the festival and serving as adjudicator will be Sir Alan Parker. There’s a lively lineup of shorts and feature films as well as workshops. Definitely worth checking out! Website here.

For this week’s column in the Irish Times (in today’s issue), I decided to write about our multicultural staff, especially in our Killarney shop (photo below of some of the team). As part of the piece, I included this recipe for Polish ice cream, given to me by our Killarney shop manager, Sylwia. The test batch was very tasty, if you like fruit and nuts!

Bakaliowe Ice Cream

Ingredients:

1 cup sugar

5 egg yolks

1 3/8 cups cream

1 1/8 cups milk

1/4 vanilla bean, cut lengthwise

1/2 cup raisins

1/2 cup dried fruits

1/2 cup almonds and other nuts

What to do:

Beat the sugar and egg yolks together until thick and pale yellow.

Bring the milk to a simmer. Remove from the heat.

Beat the milk into the eggs and sugar in a slow stream.

Pour the mixture back into pan, add the vanilla bean and place over low heat.

Stir until the custard thickens (around 70C).

Immediately remove from the heat, and place in the refrigerator until cool.

Remove the vanilla bean.

Stir in the fruits and nuts.

Whip the cream and fold into the mix.

Freeze using a domestic ice cream machine, or cover and place in the freezer.

Sorry I haven’t posted for the past few days, but this is our busiest time of the whole year.

The August Bank Holiday weekend is always madness, and my brother and I have been in the Dingle and Killarney shops from morning until night. It’s really the peak of the whole season, and from here, we slowly begin the return to quieter times and a more normal life.

However, it’s fun when the shops are so crowded. There’s a real buzz, and today the sun came out in earnest, and the Killarney shop was hopping. I snapped these photos in an attempt to show what we look like in high season!

For my first article in the August series for the Irish Times (today’s paper), I decided to write about Nell GrandfieldÂ (picture below, from an old postcard), who was making ice cream in our Dingle shop from the 1940s to the 1970s.

IÂ often think how we’re so proud of ourÂ gourmet foods in recent times, and are so snobbish about the old fashioned ways.

Yet, if you think about it, virtually all Irish farmers were organic 50+ years ago, before pesticides really came in, and there were many, many people making small batches of what we’d now consider artisan foods. Of course, they didn’t have access to the wide range of ingredients we do, and perhaps not the level of outside influence, but you can’t hold that against them.

Many of the top chefs are now extolling the virtues of buying organic and buying local from small producers. If you think about it, that’s what everyone was doing in the days before the big supermarkets. So either people in the food business back then were all ahead of their time, or we owe them a bit of credit, or both…

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